Let me make this clear: You may well receive very good medical care from Oklahoma Heart Hospital. However, their accounting and billing operation is so pitifully incompetent it borders on criminal negligence in my opinion.

Let me explain. We all know that American medical care has become outrageously expensive, and Obamacare has made it worse. In light of this, one of the few real benefits for Veterans is the free health care that exempts us from Obamacare. It works really nicely for us disabled veterans. Not long ago Congress added something to the pie, called the Veterans Choice Act. In essence, if you aren’t close to a VA clinic/hospital or your facility can’t perform certain services, or can’t do them in a medically timely manner, the VA can refer you out to a contract insurance agency and you get that missing care from a civilian supplier. The VA pays for it through the contracted insurer.

The day of my appointment for an echo cardiogram, I showed them the card I had received from the Veterans Choice offices. They didn’t perform due diligence; they didn’t check to see what was involved. They simply billed the wrong agency. They naturally got a rejection and sent me the bill for about $300. That sounds about right, but they billed the wrong person. So I called the good folks at Veterans Choice and was patched through to TriWest; these are the folks contracted for handling claims. I was put on hold while the lady called Oklahoma Heart Hospital and she told them the right information. You would reasonably think that was the end of the matter.

No. Oklahoma Heart Hospital persists in ignoring this information and has sent me another bill. This time it was $1495.90. Do you suppose that sounds like bill-padding? Yeah; it’s also called criminal fraud. Once again, I went through the drill of calling and being passed around until someone called OK Heart again and gave them the correct information. I won’t bet on them doing the right thing.

Here we see how a major health care facility treats disabled veterans, most of whom are financially vulnerable. At this point, I have zero confidence in Oklahoma Heart Hospital. Further, jacking up the bill that way indicates some kind of criminal intent. So all I can say at this point is that if you find yourself hooked up with Oklahoma Heart Hospital, watch out. You’ll find your credit ruined and yourself out on the street homeless before these bloodthirsty vampires are through you.